Business Challenge

HP launched a branding initiative called, “One Voice,” to better integrate its vast line of consumer electronics and computer hardware products. With a fresh design to the packaging, they faced a challenge to stay on brand across thousands of product lines and dozens of packaging types.

BrandWizard Response

BrandWizard analyzed the current packaging divisions of HP to determine all the packaging types and packaging rules and requirements for each product line and for each international market. The second step was to determine the design logic of HP packaging, developing a new design grid and a series of rules for each element found on each package type. After analyzing the business and design logic, we developed a packaging system that creates consistent package designs for each of HP’s products. The custom-built web-based system uses our patented dynamic template technology, and can handle both fixed templates for product lines that only use one package type and flexible template designs for the product lines that have many variations in dimensions. A step-by-step process guides the user in choosing the correct product line, region, number of languages, package type and layout. Once the setup is complete, the user can then add copy text, images and other design elements to the package design. When finished, the user simply clicks the “Complete” button and the system automatically generates an Adobe Illustrator and an Adobe PDF file of the completed package design with all of the user’s copy, image and design elements included. These files can be sent to a printer or edited for further modification. Packaging reports provide administrators with a detailed view of the types of package designs that are being created, who is creating them and when they created them. The reports also include how long it took the system to create package designs and what images and graphics were used.

Business Results

The HP team realized hundreds of thousands of dollars in cost savings generated by automating package design creation. In addition, the company gained greater consistency in its packaging by providing a system that keeps the company on brand.